A collaboration application is an application that enables its users to manipulate (add to, edit, etc.) a body of substantive content most commonly organized into a collection of informative collaboration documents that are made remotely accessible to the community of users, usually through a search interface.
One example of a collaboration application is a wiki application. A wiki application typically includes a dynamic collection of substantive information organized in the format of a collection of article-type web pages hosted on a site maintained on a computer network. In most cases, a user of the wiki application is able to selectively retrieve an article through a query process that involves a user-submission of one or more search terms that are compared to key words associated with the articles. A typical article will contain hypertext links that can be navigated to other related sources of information including, but not necessarily limited to, other articles within the content of the wiki application.
In general, users are allowed to make edits and additions to the content of the wiki application. Most if not all pages include a link to edit functionality. If a user desires to change the page, he or she simply navigates the link (e.g., thereby causing the wiki application to display a corresponding editing screen). When the user is finished editing, they issue a submit command (e.g., by pressing a submit button) thereby publishing the changes to the content of the wiki application. In general, users are allowed to edit the work of other authors (in contrast to a web log, where changes to material as originally posted are generally not allowed).
Users of a wiki application are also typically allowed to add new pages to the body of content. A new page can be linked by the page creator or by other users to existing pages. The creator and/or other users can edit the content of a new page. Thus, the content of a wiki application grows and adapts as the result of the collective editing and authorship efforts of the wiki application's community of users.
Some collaboration applications are publicly oriented. One example of this is the Wikipedia system, which is an Internet-based encyclopedia project operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization (see www.wikipedia.com). Other collaboration applications are not open to the general public. For example, some companies operate a wiki application, for example, to create an internal knowledge base.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended for use as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.